As embarrassingly primitive as it may seem, rock ‘n’ roll is foremost an expression of rebellion against firmly held parental values. The primary distinction between pop and rock is that parents may tap their feet to the former but must, by God, detest the undiluted medium and message of the…
“We are revolutionaries, y’nuh,” says Bob Marley, early in Rhino’s video recollection of the creation of Catch a Fire. True in a double sense: The Wailers were emphatically political where most reggae bands of the day were not, and they were the first to aggressively construct a crossover album with…
Texas rawk quartet Speedealer has endured its share of hassles, legal and otherwise. First there was the cease and desist order. Then there was the bankruptcy. And tonight, lead singer and guitarist Jeff Hirshberg is trying to shake some unpleasant bug he woke up with this morning, plus the cell…
Acouple of weeks after Melissa Ferrick won a Boston Music Award for Outstanding Female Singer/Songwriter in April, she wrote about it in her online journal. But instead of waxing poetic on the magic of her moment — when her name was announced, maybe, or how she felt when she stepped…
What you see before you — two brothers sharing a stage in front of the adoring handful, two boys singing songs about football, their grandfather’s birthday and doing the dishes — is the opening few minutes of any episode of VH1’s Behind the Music, the happy tale before it mudslides…
The timbre of Sonny Vincent’s voice carries a genuine been-there-barely-survived-it tinge, like some grizzled conspiracy theorist you’d find seated next to you at the counter of a Denny’s. Vincent chooses words carefully, often pausing mid-sentence, and you can almost hear him shaking his head as he recalls bits of his…
Ah, the ravages of suburban youth. Hours spent in the company of your own worthless and unattractive self. Screaming to be noticed and praying to be invisible at the same time. Long nights where you ride into town with your equally self-conscious friends to do nothing in particular, waiting for…
For far too long now, The Band has rested on the dusty shelves of musty intellectuals who treat the works of Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel and Rick Danko as though they’re history lessons instead of rock songs. Punch up one wonderful Web site devoted to The…
Never let it be said that St. Paul, Minnesota, ain’t got no soul. If there’s any doubt as to whether the R&B underground is thriving in the northern climes, the brothers Tillman have stepped up to correct your ass. Harold Martin Tillman, a.k.a. Har Mar Superstar, and older bro Sean…
The power of Steely Dan always sprang from the clash between the sonority of their musical craftsmanship and the cynical, corrosive spirit that fueled their lyrics. So it’s appropriate that the defining moment in this 60-minute look at the making of the group’s 1977 masterwork Aja comes during a catty…
Ian Pooley has been around the block too many times to be lumped in with the current wave of German techno artists, most of whom are either obsessed with paring down their music to impossibly minimalist levels or simply milking the same repetitive sound. Pooley began his musical career with…
Remember the old music-industry joke, “What’s the difference between the Titanic and (insert record label of choice here)?” That’s right, darling, the Titanic had at least one good band. But just because scads of major-label employees continue to be shown the door, it doesn’t mean the brass have refrained from…
I’m gonna take out my eyes and wash them clean/Filling them in the decay/Removing all the debris, because the world I’d like to see is not behind, beside, below, above or in front of me. — Mike Matteson Mike Matteson was eagerly awaiting his upcoming performance at the Green Room…
In three weeks, the Black Heart Procession finishes the solo leg of its U.S. tour and hooks up with Man or Astro-Man? for a series of dates in the Northwest and along the East Coast. Man or Astro-Man?, as you might be aware, plays manic, intergalactic surf music, Dick Dale-on-crank…
The deal with the Mermaid Avenue recording sessions was, if you wrote the music, you got to sing the song. So Nora Guthrie was a bit perplexed to find Wilco had recorded a Billy Bragg number, set to her father Woody’s lyric, “Joe DiMaggio.” As Bragg tells it, she confronted…
Any aspiring metalhead who doesn’t know Jack is shit out of luck. That’s because the cherub-faced teenager with the spiked hair named Jack Osbourne has become, merely by his bloodline, a big wheel in the music industry. His mommy happens to be Sharon Osbourne, the woman whose summer rock tour,…
“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: PANTERA TEAMS UP WITH VIVID GIRLS FOR IN-STORE APPEARANCES DURING OZZFEST.”So says the press release issued by Vivid Video, a porn purveyor. Oh, joy. Porn star Raylene will add zing to a Thunderbird Zia in-store appearance by Grammy-nominated metal goobs Pantera. This will precede the band’s co-headlining…
If you were to judge the online music revolution based solely on the MP3.com charts, you’d have to conclude that most folks sitting at their computers were either DJs looking to download beats for their sets, or obsessive and potentially dangerous “Weird Al” Yankovic fans. What else could possibly account…
Rancid has been one of the only bands to show noticeable improvement from album to album, starting with the raw but monotonous Rancid in 1993, evolving to the more melodic Let’s Go and the stellar blend of street punk and Chuck Berry-style rock . . . And Out Come the…
The relevant debate over turntablism is no longer whether the wicky-wicky is indeed legitimate music and the Technics 1200 a real instrument. Humans are possessed by a need to drag sound out of any remotely suitable object, no matter how much work that object may require first — after all,…
The Mile Ends The Mile Ends EP (Sundazed) In case you haven’t noticed, local music historian Johnny Dixon is writing the book on ’60s Phoenix rock for Sundazed Records one chapter at a time. This Superfine Dandelion reissue is one of the more compelling installments, if only for Dixon’s liner…
The first time I’d ever heard the term “elder statesman” used by a rock ‘n’ roll star was by Mott the Hoople’s Ian Hunter, in a 1979 issue of Trouser Press. “That’s me expounding like an elder statesman,” he remarked somewhat self-deprecatingly, after giving his seal of approval to bands…
